Teams and Teamwork

Planning Ahead How do teams help organizations? How do teams work? How do teams make decisions? How can leaders build high-performance teams?

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Teams in Organizations
A team is a small group of

people with complimentary skills who work together to achieve a common purpose and hold themselves mutually accountable for its accomplishment
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Teams in Organizations
Teamwork is the process of

people working together in teams to accomplish common goals

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Teams in Organizations
Synergy means that a team is using its membership resources to the fullest and is achieving more as a unit than could otherwise be achieved

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Teams in Organizations
Usefulness of Teams increasing resources for problem solving fostering creativity and innovation improving quality of decision making enhancing members commitments to tasks raising motivation through collective action helping control and discipline members
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Teams in Organizations
What can go wrong in teams? social loafing personality conflicts task ambiguity poor readiness to work poor teamwork

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Teams in Organizations
Committees
usually operate with an ongoing

purpose membership may change over time

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Teams in Organizations
Task Force usually operates on more temporary basis tasks very specific and time defined often disbands after task is completed creativity and innovation are very important processes
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Teams in Organizations
Cross-Functional Teams Members come from different functional units and parts of an organization. Teams are created to knock down walls separating departments. Team works on a specific problem or task with the needs of the whole organization in mind.
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Teams in Organizations

Employee Involvement Teams

Groups of workers who meet on a

regular basis outside of the formal assignments. Have the goal of applying their expertise and attention to important workplace matters. Quality circles represent a common form of employee involvement teams.
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Teams in Organizations
Virtual Teams employees who work together and solve problems through largely computer-mediated interactions
local area networks wide area networks intranets electronic meeting rooms

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Teams in Organizations
Self-Managing Work Teams workers whose jobs have been redesigned to create a high degree of task interdependence and who have been given authority to make many decisions about how they go about doing the required work
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Teams in Organizations
In Self-Managing Work Teams,

Members

are held collectively

performance results have discretion in distributing tasks have discretion in scheduling work are able to perform multiple tasks evaluate one anothers performance contributions responsible for total quality of team products
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accountable for

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How Teams Work

Team Effectiveness
two key results
task performance

member satisfaction

effective teams have high levels of both

results

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How Teams Work

Team Effectiveness input factors that influence good group process
organizational setting
nature of the task team size membership characteristics

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How Teams Work

Stages of Team Development Forming - initial orientation and interpersonal testing. Storming - conflict over tasks and ways of operating as a team. Norming - consolidation around operating task and agendas. Performing teamwork and focused task performance. Adjourning task accomplishment and eventual disengagement.
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How Teams Work

Norms and Cohesiveness behavior expected of team members can be enforces with reprimands and other sanctions

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How Teams Work

How to Build Positive Norms
acting as positive role model reinforcing desired behaviors

controlling results by regular feedback

orienting and training new members to adopt desired

behaviors holding regular meetings to discuss progress using team decision-making methods to reach agreement
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How Teams Work

Cohesiveness degree to which members are attracted to and want to remain part of a team can be good if paired with positive performance norms more cohesiveness the greater conformity of members to norms
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How Teams Work

Task and Maintenance Needs Task Activities
contribute directly to teams performance

purpose

Maintenance Activities support emotional life of team

Distributed Leadership
makes every member responsible for
correctly recognizing when task and/or maintenance

activities are needed and responding appropriately

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How Teams Work

Communication Networks Decentralized
All members communicate directly with one

another

Centralized
Activities are coordinated and results pooled by

central point of control

Restricted
Polarized subgroups contest one another. Subgroups may engage in antagonistic relations.
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Decision Making in Teams

Methods for Team

Decisions
lack of response authority rule minority rule majority rule consensus unanimity

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Decision Making in Teams

Assets and Liabilities of Team

Decisions
Potential Advantages
information

alternatives
understanding, acceptance

and commitment

Potential Disadvantages
social pressure to conform
minority domination time demands
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Decision Making in Teams

Groupthink tendency for highly cohesive groups to lose their critical evaluative capabilities
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Decision Making in Teams

Symptoms of Groupthink
illusions of group invulnerability rationalizing unpleasant

data belief in inherent group morality negative stereotypes of competitors pressure to conform self-censorship illusions of unanimity mind guarding
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Leadership and High Performance Teams

High performance teams
clear and elevating goal task-driven, results oriented structure

competent and committed members

collaborative climate high standards of excellence external support and recognition strong and principled leadership

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Leadership and High Performance Teams

Team-Building Process Step 1 problem awareness Step 2 data gathering Step 3 data analysis and diagnosis Step 4 action planning Step 5 action implementation Step 6 - evaluation
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Leadership and High Performance Teams

Leadership Challenges establish clear vision of future create change unleash talent

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